


The Incandescence of Eternity

by Elwyne



Category: Daredevil (TV), Doctor Who
Genre: Crossover, Prologue, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elwyne/pseuds/Elwyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt Murdock is nearly ready to give up. Then, two strangers appear to show him the light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Incandescence of Eternity

This could be it, Matt thought. This could be the time I don't get up.

Blood gushed from his back, where a bullet had torn through muscle and shattered his shoulder blade. To Matt it sounded like a broken fire hydrant, pumping gallon after gallon of precious fluid uselessly into the street. He struggled to turn, to reach, to find some way to stem the flow, but his mangled body would not respond.

Instead, he lay face down in a mire of rainwater, oil, and now his own blood, the alley's stink assaulting him from all sides. He'd come expecting to find his target unaccompanied and unarmed. Wrong on both counts, he was halfway over the wall to safety before the bullet found him. The ground hit him nearly as hard: cracked ribs, he knew, and maybe a concussion. As if bumps and bruises mattered when he was bleeding to death.

The noise of the city went on without him. Traffic, sirens, distant cries for help he could not answer. He thought of Foggy, his best friend, and the partnership they had dreamed of since their first day of law school. Now, thanks to him, Nelson and Murdock would never be.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the dark. “I’m so sorry.”

His awareness began to fade. He imagined a light growing brighter in the sky: Heaven's cool unearthly glimmer, calling him home. But the things he'd done... could he follow that light? Would the abode of angels accept him as he was?

A new sound swelled, drawing him back to the fetid alley. From a low electronic wail it blossomed into a throbbing, discordant shriek, pressing into his aching skull like a physical thing. Just as the pain become unbearable the noise faded away, leaving something new in the alley with him: a shape that wasn't there before, cool and alien and unlike anything he had ever sensed.

An ordinary wooden door creaked open. Two figures stepped into the alley, sneakers and work boots, two figures moving and breathing - and three heartbeats.

Matt's own heart staggered nearly to a stop.

"This is New York?" A woman's voice, young, British, skeptical. "I thought it'd be cleaner."

"Manhattan Island, early twenty-first century." Male, also British, working-class accent, imperious tone. "Come on, let's have a look."

"Hold on." Matt felt her turn; the sneakers splashed toward him through the muck. "Doctor, there's someone here. He's hurt." 

Warm as sunlight she crouched beside him, smelling of fresh air and summer and far-away worlds he could only imagine. Her heartbeat, eager but ordinary, soothed him. Her breath was a soft wind in his ear. "You'll be all right," she murmured as the work boots hurried toward them. "We're here to help."

As best he could Matt turned toward her, bathing his face in her radiance. Her voice was a cool hand on a fevered brow. Her touch on his arm was a moment of calm in the chaos of his mind. “Are you an angel?” he croaked.

A flush of embarrassment kindled through her. "No," she said. "I'm Rose, I'm with the Doctor. We're gonna help you."

The second figure knelt by his head. Tall as a man, smelling of leather, damp wool, and electronics, but cold, too cold to be alive. And the heart - hearts! They beat in tandem, one-two-three-four, hypnotic and terrifying at once. Matt shrank away, as much as his unresponsive body would allow.

"What are you?" he stammered.

"I'm the Doctor, lucky for you." An icy electronic hum ran down Matt's spine, then zeroed in on his shoulder. There was a brief, sharp burning, a scorched smell, and the torrent of blood ceased to flow. Shards of bone shifted; Matt swallowed a yelp of pain. Then the hum ceased. "You'll live," said the stranger. "But I'd get that looked at if I were you."

"Doctor, we can't just leave him here," said the woman.

"I'll be all right," said Matt. He pushed himself onto his side and stopped, panting with effort. He could hear the bones in his shoulder beginning to knit. Whatever the man had done - Then Rose leaned closer, and before he could stop her she plucked away his mask. Pain lanced through his body as he flung his arm up to hide his face and fell, unsupported, onto his wounded back.

"Is that so?" said the Doctor. Four hands, two warm, two cool, slipped under Matt's torso and eased him upright. The electronic hum resumed, and a cold light played across his eyes. He turned his face away. The double heartbeat ticked up a fraction.

"Right," said the Doctor. "You're coming with us." Ignoring Matt's protests, the man heaved him over his shoulder like a sack of concrete. Feebly Matt struggled. A thousand tiny aches stabbed through his chest, and his head swam. Then they were through the door. An enormous room opened around them, full of alien noises and electronic smells, pulsing with cold, metallic life. The Doctor eased him onto his feet and lowered him into a chair that creaked like old vinyl and stank of centuries.

"What is this place?" said Matt. It was too strange: a cathedral built of circuit boards and sandstone, with doors leading off in all directions and a ceiling so far away and so bright with energy it might as well have been the sky. He turned this way and that, listening, feeling, but nothing his body could tell him made any sense.

"What's wrong with his eyes?" Rose murmured, sotto voce but so loud in Matt's ears she may as well have shouted.

"He's blind," said the Doctor, and Matt stopped cold.

Rose shifted. She had his mask in her hand; he heard the catch in her breath when she discovered its secret. "What were you doing out there?" she said.

Matt said nothing. 

"Trying to be a hero," the Doctor said, his voice surprisingly kind. He took the mask and turned it over in his hands. "Like in the stories. Zorro. Robin Hood."

Still Matt said nothing. The extra heartbeat, the alien surroundings, the blood loss, all conspired to leave him dizzy.

"But how?" said Rose.

"There are other ways of seeing," said the Doctor.

Matt pushed through the fog of pain and weirdness. "You have two hearts," he said, and was gratified by the startled silence that followed.

"See, Rose?" said the Doctor finally. "Your eyes never told you that much."

"You're not human," said Matt.

"Very good," said the Doctor. "Anything else?"

"This is all -" he waved a hand at the room around him - "alien."

"Well done," said the Doctor. "And a lucky thing for you too." He drew the strange humming tool from his pocket and ran its electronic buzz across Matt's ribs. The bones settled themselves in place. Matt drew a surprised and grateful breath.

"Thank you."

"Nothing to it." The Doctor pocketed the device with a flourish. "And for my next trick -" He turned away and began flipping switches on a broad console at the center of the room. A murmur rose up from the floor, growing and swelling into a wild electronic shriek that built and faded and built again. The room trembled, the floor vibrating beneath their feet. Matt felt the world fall away. His hands clutched at the chair.

"Hold on!" the Doctor shouted over the noise. Rose slipped her arm through Matt's; he seized her like a lifeline in the chaos, focusing on her steady, unhurried heartbeat, the excitement humming in her blood. Then the noise and shaking faded, and the room came to a standstill. Somehow Matt knew that the door they'd come through no longer opened in Hell's Kitchen.

The Doctor's boots rang on metal grating as he strode across the room. He flung open the door, and an icy burning smell penetrated the space. Matt turned, his mind working furiously. Nothing in the world had ever smelled like that.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Come and have a look," said the Doctor.

"Doctor," Rose chided.

"It's all right," said Matt. Slowly he got to his feet. Curiosity outweighed weakness in his limbs, and he made his way slowly to the Doctor's side. As he neared the open doorway, a sense of nothingness opened up before him. He stopped, his breath caught in his chest. No wind, no sound, just the movement of infinitesimal particles in an ocean of emptiness.

"What do you see?" asked the Doctor gently.

Matt shook his head, but the void remained. He forced himself to take the last few steps. Beyond the doorway, a billion tiny points of heat gleamed against a background of brilliant desolation. 

"It's the Milky Way," said Rose, behind him. "Earth's just a little speck out there, smaller than dust."

Matt stretched his hand out into the darkness. Cold pricked at his fingertips, a colder cold than he had ever known. But there was warmth too. Tiny specks of matter swirled around him, repelled by the heat of his body, stirred by the movement of blood in his veins. He grasped at them, and laughed as they danced away.

"I've seen a lot of things in my time," said the Doctor. "Some I wish I hadn't. But some, some things make life worth it, the life I live. The life we all live."

Matt withdrew his hand and listened. Beyond his companions' quiet breathing, beyond the extra heartbeat and the strange alien murmur of the machine that supported them, he heard an echo: a deep thrumming noise, a distant singing, a heartbeat larger than any he had conceived.

"But the way you see things," the Doctor went on. "I don't see things that way. It's a gift."

Matt swallowed. It was impossible, what he felt. The heartbeat of the universe, the pulse of heaven beating out across the empty sky. The songs of angels. "I've been told that before," he said.

"Thank you," said the Doctor.

"For what?"

"Sharing your gift."

He turned away from infinity to face them: the Doctor, tall and cool and strange; Rose, warm and kind and so very human. His heart seemed to expand in his chest, squeezing out the pain and rage.

"Thank you," he said. "For sharing yours."

 

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. The time is seven AM."

Matt reached out from beneath the blankets to shut off the alarm. His shoulder ached abominably. His ribs hurt when he drew breath. Outside the window, horns honked and sirens blared. Cautiously he sat up, his mind probing his body for wounds.

The gunshot to his shoulder, expertly repaired, was healing. His ribs too, and the myriad cuts and bruises all across his body. He felt rested. He felt alive.

Then he remembered.

Two strangers rescued him from that alley, one with an extra heart. They had healed him and made him whole. He recalled the touch and the scent of the alien Doctor, and the utterly human Rose. In spite of his faith he had always been skeptical of angels. But then he'd seen the Universe.

If there was a God, He had clearly sent a message.

Matt got out of bed and began to dress. In an hour he'd be with his best friend, in their tiny broom closet of an office at L and Z. Since the day they met they had dreamed of helping people. They had dreamed of a partnership, of making a difference, side by side as superheroes of justice. 

Now it was time to make their dreams come true.

"Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law." He spoke the words out loud, savoring their shape on his tongue. Then, smiling, he picked up his cane. The world was ready.

And he was ready for the world.


End file.
